‘Gollies’ in the window of a shop in North Yorkshire.
Photograph: Alamy

On the beach in Kent this summer, my teenager went off to the gift shop. It is a treasure trove of tat. Whoopee cushions and shell ornaments, lucky dips, inflatable dolphins, toy swords and fairy figurines. She came back all agitated. “They are selling Jim Crow dolls in there!” I didn’t know what she meant. Then she showed me a picture. They were golliwogs, part of my childhood, but not hers. She didn’t know the word and had never seen one. This is not down to that insane concept “political correctness gone mad”. This is down to progress, where we tend to avoid giving children racist toys.

She and my friend went back to the shop to have a word. The shopkeeper said: “People love them, especially black people.” My daughter, still outraged, wrote to the local mayor who replied that “ethnic dolls” were not illegal and she could approach Trading Standards if there was a problem.

Well, there is a problem all right because golliwogs have been making a comeback in the past few years, not just in this small seaside town, but all over the country. Fifteen years ago, when I first started visiting the Kent coast and would go to craft fairs, there were always knitted golliwogs. The old ladies made them, along with those crinolined dolls that cover toilet rolls, and lacy vacuum-cleaner covers. These women were in their 80s, from another era. It seemed pointless to have a conversation about racism with them as I simply assumed the golliwogs would die when they did. I was completely wrong. These things are now for sale all over the coast and in cities. They are brand new, often made in China. There is a thriving business online for “collectors”.

It is telling that those who are nostalgic for the time when everyone proudly displayed their golliwogs refuse to accept the history of these figures. Created by Florence Kate Upton in 1895, the golliwog grew out of caricatures of minstrelsy: big white teeth, frizzy hair, all one skin colour, large lips. Female characters are usually in servant costume.

There is little ambiguity about these dolls; their literary presence spells it out. Blyton, in a Noddy story, has a naughty golliwog steal Noddy’s car. In her book Three Little Golliwogs (currently trading on eBay with the description “Banned, so bid fast!”), the characters Golly, Woggee and Nigger sing their favourite song, Ten Little Nigger Boys, which celebrates the death of 10 black children. In a 1975 edition of Agatha Christie’s 1939 mystery Ten Little Niggers, a lynched golliwog appeared on the cover.

This is exactly how these wretched things ended up back in the shops. Two things have been going on: the ongoing lie that political correctness (basically, manners) has gone so mad that an open display of racism brands itself somehow as an exercise of freedom. Such people always hark back to a time of “innocence”. That innocence is now called white privilege.

The other is the lie that we live in a “post-racist” society. This is a view that is often expressed in Australia, where golliwogs are extremely popular. Yet if you go to any of the Australian websites selling them, you will see the vendors go with the word “gollies”, leaving out the obviously offensive bit. The tea towel of doom that caused the latest fuss in Dorset is a bizarre mind map. A golliwog holding a pint stands above the slogan “English freedom”. Around it are phrases such as victimhood, safe space, freedom of speech, internet trolls, sharia law. You know – the kind of stuff you want on a tea towel.

You see, this ubiquitous reclamation of the golliwog is neither fun nor nostalgic. It is less an ironic nod to our racist past than a stark reminder of our racist present.